A walk through the Eiffel tower

Vertigo C. 2002 Paris, France

This isn’t an L.A. story but it definitely planted the seed that led me to pursue photography.

September 2002. It was my very first day in the city of lights and the skies were blue. From what I had heard, that doesn’t happen too often in the fall. Our group leader had advised us to meet in front of the Opera house in order to give us some pointers and suggestions on where to go. Several headed over to the latin quatier but I was dead set on being typical and see the Eiffel tower on my first day there. My roommate Tina accompanied me even though she had been there before. Once we were there I realized I forgot my camera. I didn’t want to lose any more time so I bought a Kodak advantix disposable camera at the Eiffel tower gift shop. 20 euros for 27 exposures. Damn.

The admission price between the elevator and the staircase was enough to give the climb an attempt. I was terrified. I’m already afraid of heights, and it didn’t help that I was climbing an open-air slanted staircase.

Once we made it to the first level I was blown away by the view. I could see the city as far as I could. As we walked to the other side, I made an uncharacteristic look down from the belly of the tower. There was something about the light going through the “lacy” designs of the tower’s edge that caught my attention as I briefly forgot that looking down from loopy heights gives me vertigo. There were three setting on my disposable camera. Full frame, some middle setting I cant remember, and panoramic. I set it to the middle setting and this is what I saw 5 months later when I had this developed.